Wine is a common beverage served at functions such as wedding receptions, at parties, at resorts and so on.
A conventional method of serving wine is from a bottle. In a function, at a bar or at a restaurant, for example, wine is poured into a glass from a bottle and served in the glass. At a bar, a restaurant or a resort, for example, to serve a great number of people efficiently many bottles of wine are usually opened simultaneously to enable the servers to serve the wine quickly.
It is known that once a bottle of wine is opened it is susceptible to spoilage. To slow down the spoilage process the wine bottles should be capped after each pour, but usually this does not happen. Capping can prevent oxygen from interacting with the wine, but still traps oxygen inside the bottle. Thus, capping is not an effective method of maintaining the quality of the wine in a bottle for a long period of time.
Ideally, the wine from the bottle that was first opened is served first before wine is served from another bottle. Realistically, it is practically impossible to keep track of which wine bottle was opened before another bottle given the pace of service in a setting such as a restaurant, a cruise ship, a resort, or the like. Thus, in places like resorts or cruise ship where bar service is available nearly all day the quality of the wine that is poured can vary. Furthermore, usually any wine that is left over is discarded after the event or the closing of the bar.
Furthermore, this conventional method of serving wine at a function, a resort, a cruise ship or the like setting produces a large number of empty bottles on a daily basis, which can be a problem, specially, on a cruise ship.
To keep wine in an open bottle inert gas or non-reactive gas can be pumped into the open bottle. This method requires additional equipment to store and supply the inert gas.
In addition, another conventional method of serving wine from bottles involves having a service station for the service staff to pour wine for the customers. This method is practiced, for example, on cruise ships and resorts, where at dinner time, for example, hundreds of glasses of wine are poured and served each hour. Clearly, pouring one glass of wine at a time is time consuming and slows down the pace of service. This same problem may also occur at a catered event such as a wedding reception. In addition, the location of the catered event may not have proper facilities for serving wine or liquor, which means a “make-shift” wine service facility with a large footprint (e.g. a long table supporting many open bottles of wine) may need to be set up somewhere for the service staff to pour wine into glasses. The service facility may need to be constantly supplied with open bottles of wine to ensure efficient service for the event.